Dear Diary,
We are now 18 days into 2025. Morale is low, but I have the Library of Congress blanket I picked up at the national book festival last year. The cat approves.
On the subject of morale being low: I never want to go through another year like the one that just ended. 2024 was one long dumpster fire from start to finish, and now that it’s finally gone I am ready to spit on its grave. Can’t say 2025 is looking any better at the moment, but, well, the year is still young and I am a cynical optimist. If I’m honest, I’ve more or less completely forgotten what I did last year, so here’s the bullet points.
- Cooked a lot. I am actually pleased with myself regarding this one specific resolution.
- Spent my first full year as a cat mom.
- Had two food-packed birthday parties.
- Discovered Cat + Gamer (Wataru Nadatani) which is the very best manga in the world do not argue with me I will fight you.
- Got sucked into Shop Titans.
- Celebrated two birthdays in NYC and visited family in LA for the first time in five years. This was the highlight of the year, and it was never the same after May.
- Went on my first-ever reading retreat!
- Struggled with work, particularly in regard to boredom, burnout, and a general inability to handle longevity, which is more of an indictment of our fucking gig economy than it is of me.
- Spent a lot of money on Shop Titans.
- Got fired from work. I was trying to leave anyway, but I’m still salty af.
- Realized I never want to go back to work after exactly one month of freedom.
- Got hired by a kind friend to design her wedding stationery!!! This is quite literally the project of my dreams. More on this later.
- Started tracking milk and egg prices immediately after the election. The data support no conclusions as yet, but I am confident they will.
- Fulfilled a practically lifelong dream by getting hired at my local Barnes & Noble for the holiday season. Actually, you know what, I’m going to go ahead and call this a highlight because I have spent YEARS fantasizing about working in a bookstore and now I’ve finally done it and I loved it. Spent more money than I actually made, but such is life. If I somehow manage to get a job at a library this year – and believe me, I’m trying – I will be crowning myself Bookdragon Supreme, there will be no debate upon this subject, bow down peasants. Long story short, I had a great time at BN, and I really want to find a way to keep working with books. (For money. This blog doesn’t count.)
- Went to my first-ever cookie swap!!! Low-key want to move to Pennsylvania. We’ll see if I can manage to get a job up there.
- Watched Wicked twice. Want to see it AGAIN, GDI.
- Got a new laptop ahead of the all but inevitable tariffs.
- Still playing Shop Titans. Fuck.
About #11: unemployment sucks and I won’t pretend otherwise, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried. All the same, there is almost no incentive to go back to work because some of the job descriptions I’ve seen on LinkedIn have been so detailed and so extensive that they’ve made my eyes glaze over after the first couple of bullets, and it’s like, how the hell did I do this before I got to Sodexo??? I have a number of applications out at the moment and I’m crossing my fingers for something to go through, but I have no faith because I usually get ghosted. It doesn’t help that I fell into a debilitating mental hole in the immediate aftermath of the election and have only lately begun to recover. It’s getting steadily better and I have been far more productive over the last couple of weeks than I was for the final three months of 2024, but I am not doing excellent at the moment.
What’s really pissing the shit out of me at the moment is that I seem to keep rediscovering hugely expensive subscriptions I forgot I had. I went through all my subscriptions at the beginning of the month and canceled all of the monthly non-essentials, but it seems like every week I get hit with some giant bill that puts me in the negatives and I’m about to throw something. That happened to me with Amazon Prime, and it happened to me again just now with Dropbox Pro. Thankfully I was able to get both subscriptions canceled and refunded, so I’m fine as far as the money goes, and I am so grateful to have received prompt and competent customer service in both cases. But I hate this whole subscription-based world so much, and if I have any hair left by the end of this month it’ll be a miracle. It’s been an angry, confusing time, and I frankly don’t see that getting any better.
Anyway, the general message is that I’m strugglebus as always but I’m getting back on track slowly but surely. For me, getting back on track usually starts with a cleaning blowout that serves as a hard reset, which in this case was particularly important because I didn’t clean the apartment at all while I was working at BN – work has a way of sucking all the ambition out of me, no matter how few hours I work – and the apartment got quite septic. 2025 therefore started with a two-day cleaning binge, which took place right after my final day at BN. And here of course is little Miss Circe No Help, as she will henceforth be known, being absolutely no help. I spent an entire weekend cleaning and making the apartment a nice place to live again, and this useless girl spent that time sitting around watching me clean without even trying to help, whining to get attention, screaming at me to make her breakfast and dinner, and PULLING THE TASSEL OFF ONE OF MY BOOKMARKS OMG SHE IS GOING TO THE KITTY ORPHANAGE I REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME. I still love her, of course, because I have to. >:( I got the last laugh when she got her rabies shot at the end of that week.
One of the brighter spots in this holiday season: stealing this shelf from my mom :’D
So, funny story. This guy originally lived in my parents’ basement as a shoe rack, but my mom redid part of the basement, and as part of that process she decided she wanted a different shoe rack because – and I quote – the old shoe rack only had three shelves. Only after she’d got back from the store with a proper four-shelved rack, she recounted the shelves on the old rack and realized she’d got another rack for nothing, so the new rack went into the basement and the old rack went up to my old bedroom to hide her shame. Fast-forward to new year’s, when Circe and I spent a few days at home and I noticed this rack sitting sadly in the corner of my room, and asked if I could steal him. The whole story came out then and there, and Mr. Three Shelves got shoved into my trunk at the end of the visit and now he’s living his second life as my auxiliary pantry which is amazeballs. I fucking LOVE having an entire shelf for my instant noodles. It’s opened up so much space in my pantry cabinets and on the microwave cart, which also gives me more room for all my pots and pans. I’ve been low-key looking for some kind of pantry solution for a while specifically because of the pots and pans, but kitchen storage is expensive as shit. As for the name, I will never call him anything other than Three Shelves.
Leaving aside the delight that was discovering Mr. Three Shelves, the new year’s holiday was a pleasant surprise because Circe did a lot better than she did the last time I dragged her home for a visit. She was moderately curious about the house and spent some time wandering around and talking to her grandparents, which is a good start, even if she did get burned out fairly quickly; and, per usual, she showed some interest in the open window because this girl really loves her fresh air. But for the most part she was content to stay quietly on our bed and nap the day away, though we had some trouble with Hato hanging around in our hall and trying to get into our room to investigate the angry hissing thing on the other side of the door, and I’ll take it. At the very least there were no 6 a.m. nuclear meltdowns this go-round.
TL;DR: She did good. I’m proud of her. <3 This is a very good thing because I’m dragging her back in a couple of weeks for a three-day LNY visit, lol. Also the rest of the new year’s visit was great because new year’s always means self-indulgent over-eating, starting with the pumpkin bread baked by a BN coworker and proceeding to the Napolitan we ate while waiting for the ball to drop. This year my mom happened to have a bag of mochi rice in the pantry, so she tried making sekihan for the first time (second picture). And I’ve gotta say, I have never been a fan of adzuki, but I can inhale that rice like nobody’s business. I have got to try making that at home. I finished my leftovers in one sitting and I was very sad.
And here is Hato also waiting for the ball to drop, the rare moment in which she was not busy being our nemesis. A cute pigeon-coded nemesis, though.
And here is the laundry I had to do the day after New Year’s. This literally is the reason we didn’t stay longer. My final BN shift was January 3, and I would’ve extended our visit to January 2 if only I hadn’t known this giant pile of laundry needed to get done before I went to work. I made the right decision, because that bag in the corner kept the door from opening completely and it was driving me crazy.
Pre-New Year’s Festivities
But first, a couple of random Circe pics that didn’t make it into the 2024 reading roundup, shared now because she’s adorable and people need to see her. Shown in the third picture with the kitty crack-stuffed jingly Snoopy head she got from Grandmama for Christmas. She loves that Snoopy head so much she’s already pulled up one of his ears and yanked a couple of the feathers out of his bottom. Also pictured: the Circe magnet I received for Christmas!!! (And then Circe being unimpressed by the magnet. Go figure.)
On the subject of Christmas: I’m always glad when it’s over because it is without doubt the most expensive time of the year, but the lead-up this year was great, starting with my first-ever cookie swap!!! I made browned butter chocolate chip cookies and was very pleased to come home with only three or four of them. They also placed third in the cookie judging – nobody was going to beat the gochujang caramel cookies and we all knew it, but the judges said they loved my cookies too. The swap itself was held in a small indie bookstore up in Lancaster (yes this is part of the reason I want to move to PA lemme alone), and I want to go back because they had such cute stuff (haul shown in the final picture, natch). I came out with two boxes of homemade cookies but I think my favorite part of the swap was the ingenious milk station.
Best find of the holiday season: a tabletop gaming café in Virginia, where my friends and I had lunch before our annual gift exchange. We flew a little too close to the sun with the games we picked out cus none of us knew how to play them and the rules were so complicated we had to look them up on YouTube but YouTube didn’t actually help, so we ended up playing Monopoly with janky rules because the copy we grabbed did not include the rule book. I won with 3,158 points, but nothing should really be made of this because we probably counted wrong. :’) Nevertheless, it was a fun afternoon that included the Tetris tater tots that came with my croissanwich holy shit, and I would absolutely visit again. Menu shot included for posterity, because it’s hilarious.
My friends are experts in finding amazing presents I’ve never heard of, from Heather’s revenge poetry prescription pills (?!?!?! who thinks of such mind-blowing things?!) to the grievance journal Michaella sent me separately, but one of my all-time favorites has to be the ramen gift set Karen found. I haven’t had a chance to try the extra seasonings yet, but I can’t wait. Also love that it comes with Shin ramen specifically, at least I know which ramen to buy now. 😀
And then I stopped by H Mart on the way home, where I found more ramen, intended specifically for mukbang. Humans are weird.
Culinary Indulgences
Okay, this was originally just going to be the cooking corner, but before we get started on that I have to memorialize the first time I’ve ever (1) eaten at Gyuzo BBQ and (2) been to a Paris Baguette. I mean, I knew Paris Baguette was a thing that existed because one of my favorite vloggers used to work there, but I’d never actually seen one. Well, if Michelle says the strawberry cream cake is good then you know I’m putting it on my list of things to try because I am nothing if not distressingly easy to influence, though as far as influences go this one seems fairly minor and YOU KNOW WHAT SHE WAS RIGHT. I mean, I already have one of her necklaces and her tote bag, so we’re kinda past the point of shame here. I also tried the chocolate croissant (not pictured, ate it too fast) and the curry croquette (burned my tongue eating it, zero regrets). I am now a Paris Baguette fan, and I will be back. The only problem with the whole lunch is that it put me into such a food coma that I almost fell asleep on the road several times coming home and didn’t get my second wind until I ALMOST MERGED INTO SOMEONE five minutes away from home, and I never want to have a drive like that again.
Headache of the night: I misnumbered the Gyuzo photos and it’s upsetting the shit out of me even though literally nobody would’ve known if I hadn’t just pointed it out. I’m going to go jump down a hole thankssssss~
Anyway, to get back to the cooking I was supposed to be talking about before I so rudely interrupted myself, that’s been going well. I used to bemoan my habit of squirreling away food I didn’t strictly need but am now patting myself on the back because it means I am well provisioned for the next several months and am in no danger of starving while I figure out this whole Job Thing. I also now have solid motivation to go through the stuff that’s been in the freezer for gods know how long, and I think I’ve actually just managed to cook my way through the pork butt that was starting to look iffy.
In order of presentation:
- The world’s laziest chili mac, cobbled together from a frozen container of Ben’s Chili and a box of Kraft. IT WAS GREAT OKAY :’D
- This was supposed to be a variation on Hong Kong scrambled eggs with char siu, using leftover takeout chicken in place of char siu, only I overestimated the amount of chicken I needed and it did not look at all like it did in the video. I have some leftover spam in the fridge. I’m trying again tomorrow.
- Ham fried rice with my favorite frozen dumplings, which I treated myself to because I finally ate the last of my frozen homemade dumplings. This one turned out well, 10/10 will make again.
- Four and five were supposed to be a Korean potato stew that is usually made with spam but I happened to have ham I needed to use up so that’s what went into the stew. I was very disappointed with this one because the recipe made me use too much soy sauce and it did not look anything like the one in the video. We’ll need to work on this. It still tasted okay but it was a relief when I finished off the leftovers on Monday, and that’s not really what I’m going for. ;_;
And with that, I seem to have worked my way through all the pictures that needed to go into this post, so I guess it’s time to tie it off. Wishing us all a great week. Book reviews will resume next Saturday.
